Rolling Stone

AUSTIN´S FINEST

...an amazing Czech quintet called Uz Jsme Doma that rattled like a combination of Hot Rats-aphonic Frank Zappa
and John Zorn´s hyperjazz...

By David Fricke

New York

Zvláštní vydání 15.4.1996, strana 156

Performance Freedom Rock

Už Jsme Doma: lekce z komparativní rockologie. Their scene: rather more remote than Seattle or Chapel Hill.
Their sound: a very, shall we say, distinctive musical palette (thrash drumming, alpine-horn lines, and booming, five-part
vocals that sound like something out of Der Freischütz). Call it Iron Curtain art-rock, since, at ten years old,
the Czech group is among the first bands to bear the fruits of having jammed under The State. Or call it "Pure-rock", since
one of their primary influences is seventies prog-rockers Uriah Heep. However it´s pigeon-holded , Už jsme doma
(pronounced UZH-sme DO-ma) - which plays the Kitting Factory on April 13 - poses little threat to the national security
of Hootie and the Blowfish, which, given the state of things, may make them the hippiest alternative-rock band going. Their
stateside devotees include the culty San Francisco band The residents, and their influences such figures as avant-guitarist
Fred Frith and the Dadaist rock combo Pere Ubu. Of course, totalitarian regimes can be murder on one´s record collection and,
prior to the assistance of underground arts networks, the members of UJD were formed by musical experiences not unlike that
of, say, a seventies youth trapped behind the Peorian-mall curtain. "We secretly listened to Radio Luxembourg", says Mirek
Wanek, 34, the group´s lead singer and lyricist. "But before that, on the official station, there only came songs from the
Beatles, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, and John Travolta." John Travolta? And to think we complained about Kiss.

Chris Norris

New York

Special Issue 15.4.1996, page 156

Performance Freedom Rock

Uz Jsme Doma: a lesson in comparative rockology. Their scene: rather more remote than Seattle or Chapel Hill.
Their sound: a very, shall we say, distinctive musical palette (thrash drumming, alpine-horn lines, and booming, five-part
vocals that sound like something out of Der Freischütz). Call it Iron Curtain art-rock, since, at ten years old,
the Czech group is among the first bands to bear the fruits of having jammed under The State. Or call it "Pure-rock", since
one of their primary influences is seventies prog-rockers Uriah Heep. However it´s pigeon-holded , Už jsme doma
(pronounced UZH-sme DO-ma) - which plays the Kitting Factory on April 13 - poses little threat to the national security
of Hootie and the Blowfish, which, given the state of things, may make them the hippiest alternative-rock band going. Their
stateside devotees include the culty San Francisco band The residents, and their influences such figures as avant-guitarist
Fred Frith and the Dadaist rock combo Pere Ubu. Of course, totalitarian regimes can be murder on one´s record collection and,
prior to the assistance of underground arts networks, the members of UJD were formed by musical experiences not unlike that
of, say, a seventies youth trapped behind the Peorian-mall curtain. "We secretly listened to Radio Luxembourg", says Mirek
Wanek, 34, the group´s lead singer and lyricist. "But before that, on the official station, there only came songs from the
Beatles, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, and John Travolta." John Travolta? And to think we complained about Kiss.

Option

No.70 september/october 1996

Už Jsme Doma - Hollywood

This is not a sung ride through P.C. exotica for world-beat fans. Nor is this the sound of a bunch so Slavs stuck
slavishly emulating current trends in the pop marketplace. Rather, this CD is crammed with music that sweats.
Už Jsme Doma hails from the Czech Republic where they have developed an idiosyncratic approach to music making
in their decade as a group; half of which time was spent underground - in a much more literal sense than we typically
understand - as an entity forbidden by law. On their second full-length (and first Stateside) release, Už Jsme Doma´s
hyperventilating horns and brisk rythm guitars push across Beefhartian time signatures at a breakneck pace, starting and
stopping and twisting on a dime. The band´s five players all spit out vocals that sound like warning calls of enemies
approaching. By the time they colectivelly burst into sobs, halfway into Hollywood´s lead track, they´ve
established such Boredoms-esque intensity that it´s hardly a shock. The Pogues are really relevant only as a surface
comparsion (punk spit energizing an ethnic unfamiliar ti American ears), for Už Jsme Doma represents a more challenging,
less melodic, more spasstic and less comprehensible listen. However, like the Pogues (and also, for example, the Mokeons),
this band of Czechs also have that rare ability to convey in their music a strange sense of brotherhood, available
to any and all who choose to make these songs part of their life. Their rollicking "ya-da-da-da´s" echo a warm feeling
of déjá vu - of a night spent drinking away sorrows in a beerhall I´ve never visited - that lets us feel a kinship
with their hardened hearts, even if we´ve never watched our homeland turned topsy-turvy by mad hopes and sad tragedies.

From interview with Guido Randzio, director of Euroralph Rec. and Oficial spokesman of
The Residents

Question: How do The Residents like collaboration with czech musicians who are members of their Freak Show Live?
Answer: The band "Už jsme doma", who is the main part of this project is absolutely wonderful and their original
music is one of the best what we ever listened.
Question: Did The Residents hear some czech groups ...... ?
Answer: I don´t know, what The Residents listened and what no. But what I know exactly, that they heared
"Už jsme doma", that they were on their gigs and that they fell in love to this great group .....